Which makes his concluding “That said, if the phone rang, I’d do it.” even more delicious.

Children are a demographic you market to, rather than market for. Marketers are trying to shape their perceptions and brand loyalty, rather than cater to their existing preferences. So it makes sense to slap Star Trek on a kids’ product even if they don’t have a preexisting relationship to the brand, because that’s…

Well, the review for this article is a C-, but when you read it, it’s quite obvious that for Barsanti it’s a B+.

Isn’t the idea that she knows Leto is doomed so she defies the order again? Also, I don’t know if it’s explicitly said, but it might put Paul’s life at risk if she got back on script and gave Leto daughters, because then there would be an alternative for the Atreides bloodline.

Yeah, their timing on this is crappy as hell...

My understanding is that they were primarily walking out to protest not getting their paychecks on time and being required to drive a great distance to the set because the production wouldn’t put them up closer (which is a safety issue, but of a different sort). Not to say the crew didn’t have gun safety concerns, but…

I think I was in the same area when I bailed. There was one book where the series’ narrative momentum completely stalled, and then in the next one, rather than get the main story moving again, it felt like “Let’s introduce three more subplots, each with their own new cast of characters!” I didn’t decide to stop…

The thing with this trailer is that it only really goes into one character, Morraine, and then presents the five actors playing the young companions, but doesn’t give them anything to do to distinguish themselves from the standard blandly handsome people you might find on any CW show. Part of the reason for that, I…

I agree with all of this except the idea that it would be impossible to compress into a trailer. I mean, they have a decent beginning on the world building focusing on the Morraine and the Aes Sedai, before the trailer goes off the rails with that bland plot overview. 

That 360 gimmick was breaking something, but it wasn’t the ground.

I wish the story had spent more time on Geidi Prime, which is where a lot of the weirdness resides, and here it’s only hinted at by the spider-with-hands thing. Caladan and Arrakis are kind of purposefully familiar to our world, Planet Scotland and Planet Middle East.

Just opened on Thursday, here. I think a lot of stuff that shows at Cannes opens worldwide before it opens in America.

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, I watched this with my wife and kids, who had no prior experience with Dune. While the movie was on I worried that I was the only one getting anything out of it because I’m a nerd who’s seen the Lynch film several times and read the first two books, but they enjoyed themselves and were able…

Though I honestly can’t really buy Patrick Stewart in Brolin’s role either.

This was also my biggest gripe. Between the short time before the Harkonnen attack, and the fact that Leto spends a lot of that time complaining about the Harkonnens leaving everything on Dune broken, it seems less like the Atreides were a formidable force that were betrayed, and more like they were overmatched and…

I was surprised by how much background narrative they took out, as well, but then again, the more I think about it, I’m convinced a lot of that was good cuts. (SPOILERS) For example, the Lynch version tells us two or three times that Yueh is incapable of harming his patients due to his imperial conditioning, and that…

I didn’t keep my glossary, but the insecurity just jumped off the page--that and the fact that they were showing it on a double-bill with The Last Starfighter.

Yeah, it’s a pretty big leap from Kyle MacLachlan, who looked like he could easily have been cast as Superman, and who in his acting for David Lynch mode goes really quickly from acting teen-childish to “I’ll be the head of your cult!”

Honestly, I think this is a movie made for people who’ve seen the previous movie, more so than book readers. There’s a lot of exposition this movie just skips over, that is explained (and often explained and explained again) in the Lynch version. And knowing that exposition going in (Lynch’s Dune is on HBO Max, and I…

The Ruby Rose part isn’t that thought-provoking. Her post was inspired by the public discussion of on-set safety that’s been provoked by IATSE’s contract negotiations (well, that and the fact that WB told her they were making a sequel to The Meg without her). IATSE leadership agreed to a tentative contract about a…